sketch: Schlaflied - Lullaby

Today, we decided to blog about another great sketch from Knallerfrauen by Martina Hill. It's called Schlaflied [Sleep-song = lullaby] and - as always - offers fantastic language learning material.

We decoded and translated the text for you, and decided to add some additional explanations to the video that you might - or might not be interested in: Learning by imitation is the most natural way, so we want to encourage you to practice as much with the original video as possible. Skip the additional information if you want, but it might answer you some questions you've asked yourself and can help you improve your everyday German by having a more systematic look at certain phenomena. When you're already familiar with some of them, perhaps because you've already learned about them in our free German course, our compilation will be a helpful review for you.

Using the player buttons, choose to display German, English or decoded German below the video. The following transcript is clickable. Click on any German sentence to jump to that point in the video. When the video runs, the current part in both the decoding and the ↓ parallel text further below will be highlighted to facilitate comparison of the different translations when you want to jump back and forth. Click to hide.

The following transcript is clickable. Click on any sentence to jump to that point in the video. When the video runs, the current part will be highlighted in both the parallel text and the ↑ decoding above to facilitate comparison of the different translations when you want to jump back and forth. Click to hide.

Our little lady!You {polite} really are an angel.Uuh, she is always so quiet andhe sleeps most of the time.Well, during the day.But at night, she makesmy life a living hell.Then she cries all the time.She just does not want to go to sleep.Have you tried (singing her) a lullaby?Yes, of course. I do that every night.Since her birth. Every night.... heidschi bumbeidschi sleeping...Now go to sleep! [annoyed]... in heaven are the little sheep, the well-behaved.Why don't you go to sleep? {annoyed}They fly along the heavenly canopy.Please go to sleep!Aba heidschi bumbeidschi bum bum.Please go to sleep!

5 interesting sentences to remember

Note: All these are examples of spoken, not written German (except #3).

1. ETWAS AM MACHEN SEIN

Sie ist die meiste Zeit am Schlafen. [She is the most Time on-the Sleep.]
She sleeps most of the time.

am + (capitalized) Verb + sein describes the state of doing something. But don’t confuse its use with the present progressive (I am doing sth), just consider it as an alternative to the present tense that works when you’re describing a more or less constant state. („Sie schläft die meiste Zeit.“ would be perfectly fine as well.) Furthermore, note that this construction is particularly common in South Germany, and that there are people who might consider this bad German. (For very advanced learners, the SPIEGEL article Wie die Sprache im Rheinland am Verlaufen ist by Bastian Sick might be interesting.)

2. NUR ETWAS TUN/NUR AM ETWAS TUN SEIN

Nachts ist die nur am Schreien! [At-night is ☞t(she) only on-the Cry/Scream!]
At night, she cries all the time.

nur (only) here is short for immer nur (always only) which is used to express that somebody is always doing the same thing. (Remember that nur also has its usual meanings only or just. The individual context dictates the precise meaning).

einschlafen is a verb with a separable prefix (ein). You can compare its use to the English verbs like clear out. While in English, it’s either clear your drawers out or clear out your drawers, the prefix in German is usually put at the end of the sentence (a # in the decoding shows where it belongs). This is true for all verb forms except the infinitive (einschlafen) and the Perfekt/Plusquamperfekt, where ein is part of the participle (Ich bin/war eingeschlafen. I fell/had fallen asleep).
How to remember that?
It’s easiest to learn verbs directly with their corresponding forms. Add them to your flashcards or write down different example sentences for the different forms.

4. DIE = SIE, DER = ER?

Die ist immer so ruhig. [☞ (T)She is always so quiet.]
She is always so quiet.

The personal pronouns er (he), sie (she), es (it) and sie (they) can be replaced by the corresponding article forms der, die, das and die. In the decoding we indicate this mixture as a mixture of the and she/he/it/they plus a pointing index, e.g. ☞ (t)he or ☞(t)she. The pointing index illustrates the effect of the replacement: It’s like pointing at someone while you’re talking about that person.
When talking like that about someone who is present, this is quiet impolite. (Was will die denn? - What does SHE want?)

When talking about someone who is absent (or can’t here you) it can express annoyance or anger, but it’s also common for banal gossip. (a student about his teacher: Der ist so gemein! – He is so mean!)

Furthermore, it’s used for answering questions about people, most often about where they are or what they do. Then the answers usually start with die/der. Again, this lays emphasis on the subject.